


with ink on the tuxedo and blood on the wedding dress

by reogulus



Category: Ready or Not (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Darkest Night treat, Deal with a Devil, F/M, Gift Giving, Purgatory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-09-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26188759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/pseuds/reogulus
Summary: Her wedding band was destroyed in the fire; but there’s no divorce from life itself, and death is just an old foe with whom Grace hasn’t settled the score.
Relationships: Daniel Le Domas/Grace Le Domas
Comments: 9
Kudos: 73
Collections: Darkest Night 2020





	with ink on the tuxedo and blood on the wedding dress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [arbitrarily](https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/gifts).



Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.

**George Orwell** , _1984_

The way the plovers cry goodbye.  
The way the dead fox keeps on looking down the hill with open eye.  
The way the leaves fall, and then there’s the long wait.  
The way someone says we must never meet again.  
The way mold spots the cake,  
The way sourness overtakes the cream.  
The way the river water rushes by, never to return.  
The way the days go by, never to return.  
The way somebody comes back, but only in a dream.

**Mary Oliver** , _We Should Be Well Prepared_




Her world ends first, but she doesn’t end with it.

After the bang, there remains only a whimper. Grace hears it every morning when she wakes up, when reality pulls her out of the blissful ignorance of sleep, every goddamned morning, it’s the first thing registered in her consciousness without fail. It says just one thing: _you’re fucked_.

And then she gets up, gets ready, goes to work. Her wedding band was destroyed in the fire; but there’s no divorce from life itself, and death is just an old foe with whom Grace hasn’t settled the score.




The woods were so dark, save for the dying headlights of the wrecked car. They are making their way back to the house, hauling Grace’s unconscious body back to the house. His father flipped a coin again this time—Daniel called heads and picked her up by her feet. It was the first time he got a good look at her Converses, those old dingy shoes caked in blood and mud that carried her as far as they could.

The soles were well-worn, though, and they somehow afford Daniel's imagination a brief reprieve from the ruinous scene surrounding him and the one that awaits him when they get back inside. He thought about Grace, from before, in a T-shirt and jeans to pair with those same shoes. Her before—before she even met Alex.

It brings a hint of a smile to Daniel’s face, almost as if he can’t help it.

“Are you even listening to me?” His father interrupts his own tirades against their ancestors, Mr. Le Bail and everything gone wrong with tonight to accuse him with a rhetorical question yet again.

Daniel bites his tongue. “Yeah, sorry.”




“Ma’am, I’ll have to ask you to put that out.”

The paramedic has the courtesy to drape a shock blanket over her first, before voicing the reprimand. Grace flips him off before she takes another deep drag and stomps it out on the ground under her Converse. They are gonna get her on a gurney, apparently, because she’s lost a lot of blood and she will be unsteady on her feet. Grace laughs, but it comes out like a half-choke, the saliva gone down the wrong pipe.

Her lungs are the first to protest. Pain is starting to register much too sharply as the adrenaline wears off, settling in her ribcage.

She doesn’t remember much about getting shot in the stables, but she’ll never forget the feeling of the strip of bloodied lace peeling away from the wound in her hand. It won’t be the last time she screams that day. After that, it feels easier to peel off the wedding dress from her battered body. Like a snake shedding old skin, she is numb in her acceptance of this change.

Underneath the hospital gown she is, but doesn’t feel, naked. To be naked is to imply there is something corporeal to be seen and acknowledged; but she feels like a ghost whose presence can only be inferred from the feeling of goosebumps, the drape of a bedsheet, the lack of a rational explanation otherwise.




Mom has distributed the ceremonial robes, and everyone has gone off to prepare themselves for the final act of the night. Daniel slips away through the servants’ corridors quietly. Tony’s study is two doors down the hall to his right; Daniel slips inside, locks the door behind him.

The little bottle with the red cap is a temporary solution, but to do this right—he needs to think about what remains after the blood is spilled. His thin lips curve into a quiet smile to himself. Charity once called him nihilistic and short-sighted at couple’s counselling. _Guilty as charged_ , Daniel remembers replying.

It’s a strange feeling to be able to surprise one’s nihilistic, short-sighted self. It leaves a bittersweet taste in his mouth, but he has no time to savor it like he did the bourbons from dinner.

He has one shot to do this right. To prepare for the inevitable arrival of dawn.

His phone is at 40% battery—not ideal, but probably enough—with a few quick swipes, Daniel unlocks the screen with his thumb print and scrolls through his contacts list. His watch and the screen both tell the time, 5:09am. He finds the lawyer’s name. He sets the phone down on the desk, leaves it off-speaker. The muffled dial tone is the only sound in competition with his racing heart. He puts on the robe, fastens the buttons, drapes the hood over his head. He waits.




Like so many other things after Grace leaves the premises of the Le Domas castle, time begins to feel different.

She doesn’t hire a lawyer. She called a hotline for free consultation after getting discharged from the hospital and decided against retaining anyone after three minutes on the phone. The Le Domas’ army of lawyers has mostly succeeded in keeping the police off her trail after the initial interview, anyway. Posthumously, her in-laws align their interests with hers at last.

She doesn’t read the news or accept any requests for interviews or comments. The cover story, as she overhears in the hospital cafeteria one day, is that there was a horrible fire set by a disgruntled employee of the family, the butler, who was apparently committed the arson under the influence and then killed himself in a vehicular accident while fleeing the scene in the car.

According to the rest of the world, it’s entirely plausible. Grace is not going to tell them any different.

For months after her discharge, the lawyers left her messages and even tried to send her letters, she deleted and trashed every single one. They never say anything substantial, only ever to invite her to their offices for a private meeting to discuss an important matter, which can only mean it’s another trap. Another two hundred nights have passed since she had outrun death, but Grace doubts she will ever feel safe. She can’t deny it: Le Bail’s Gambit is premised upon human nature itself.

After ripping up the fifth letter with the fancy letterhead that says barely anything at all, she makes a decision. 




“I need to change the beneficiary of my last will and testament,” as soon as the call is connected, Daniel wastes no time getting the words out. “If…and when I die, everything I own and have inherited goes to Grace Le Domas.”

“I can certainly look into that for you, Mr. Le Domas. Grace Le Domas, as in your sister-in-law?”

“That’s correct.”

Two beats of silence pass, followed by the sounds of typing on the keyboard. And then there’s more silence. There are sounds of high heels clicking in the hallway, getting louder as the footsteps approach—his wife, or sister, or both, heading back to the room. Daniel grits his teeth.

“Can you do it? I need this before dawn.”

“Just a moment, sir. If you are sure of these changes…” the lawyer clears her throat. Daniel can pick up on the tremor in her voice, even though she’s hiding it well enough. “I think the best way to proceed would be a holographic will. Have you got a pen and paper?”

Daniel scans the bookcases briefly, his gaze lingers on the vintage bottles of scotch locked behind the glass, displayed on the shelves. It’s the top shelf shit that grandfather left for his father, and he’s always been itching to try it. Surely if they all survive till dawn, no one, not even Tony, will bat an eye over a few panes of broken glass—there are three maids dead already. But he forces himself to tear his gaze away; he needs to be as close to sober as possible for the next hour.

Finally, he fixes his eyes upon the fountain pens lined up neatly on her father’s desk and the notepad next to them.

“I do.”




Grace still has the gifts from before: the expensive purses and jewelry that Alex bought her to her reluctance, the engagement ring she wore dutifully for three months leading up to the fateful day. She’s sold them all on eBay, pocketed the cash and packed up her car.

She keeps driving until it feels right to stop, until she grows tired of the feeling of the scar in her left palm rubbed against the pleather of the steering wheel. She pulls over on the shoulder of the highway as she comes up to a quieter stretch of the road. Dusk has given way to darkness completely. There are a few moths flailing about under the streetlamps, growing brighter. The asphalt is shiny and slick with night rain. What remains from her lunch, and what will be her dinner, rest upon the passenger seat: half-eaten burger, cold fries drenched in leftover ketchup on the wrong side of chewy.

Grace rolls down the window, breathes deeply the crisp and chilled air. She looks out to the thicket of trees and greenery over which the road was built, the depths of the valley below, beyond the railing. She thinks about falling.




The point of having an army of lawyers ready to pick up the call at any hour before dawn is—well, for cover-up, a shitload of cover-up, for the one murder that’s meant to happen and whatever string of unintended but surely un-innocent crimes that may have been committed. Daniel and his series of unrecorded DUIs since he was 16 already know how that dance goes.

He grabs the fountain pen and tests it out on the first page of the notepad. It writes like a dream. The seamless flow of words produced as the tip of the pen glides across the smooth, weighty paper brings him back to those childhood days of practicing his cursive, when Alex was just learning to walk. It’s almost fucking poetic, or maybe he's just too fucked up to know what poetry should look like.

The study has fallen into total silence again; the lawyer has told Daniel all he needs to know. But no one can help him with the part of actually getting it on paper, in his own handwriting. He hasn’t realized it, but his right hand has caught on a slight tremor. On any other night, Daniel would have interpreted that as a sure-fire sign to reach for the bottle.

He draws in a deep breath, tries to hold as much air as possible in his lungs. He puts the tip of the pen to the top left corner of the first line. He writes: _The Holographic Last Will and Testament of Daniel Le Domas_.

From there, it gets easier than it looks.

“Daniel? Where are you? We are all waiting!” His father bellows from down the hall. It sends a sudden jolt down Daniel's arm, the pen twisting sideways in his hand.

“Fuck,” he pounds the table with his left hand, balled into a fist. The sound of the impact is easily absorbed by the antique hardwood tabletop. His right hand doesn’t stop writing, crosses out the mistake and continues as fast as he can manage to write. It’s so close—so close he can taste it. He hasn’t wanted anything—he hasn’t been so sure of wanting, of doing a specific thing—to happen in his life since he shut Alex into that wardrobe on his Aunt Helene’s wedding night.

Before Daniel puts the pen to the bottom corner for the final step, the signature, a shudder runs through him. He tightens his grip around the pen. It's nothing to do with the ink blob, the blue-black stains along the curve of his thumb and forefinger. The black mark has always been his name.




Grace arrives in the city the next day. Parking is ridiculously pricey downtown, but it’s funny how the near-death experience of marrying into a devil-worshipping rich family has changed how she sees money. All around her are men and women in blazers and sheath dresses, the refraction of sunlight from glass and steel to marble and wood.

Reception is busy with their computers and phones, confirming her appointment with the lawyers who were the ones that could not leave her alone. Grace can see it from the way they look at her, in her unassuming T-shirt and jeans, and it only makes her want to smirk in response. And then Grace watches that look morph into something much different, as the people upstairs pass on instructions.

“This elevator bank to the 50th floor, please,” the tone has become much warmer within those few minutes, “and we can validate your parking before you go up.”

By the time she walks into the elevator, Grace is already bored.




“Daniel! Stop fucking about! We need to start the ritual!”

He walks into the room, to the sound of Tony’s increasingly strained voice. So, really, nothing has changed much in the past twenty-something years of his adulthood.

“I just had to take a call in the…” Daniel sticks out his thumb and points behind him, waving his hand lazily. He doesn’t want anyone to think he is less drunk than before. “The world won’t end after tonight, so uh, sorry about that.”

His father’s face gets even more flushed—at this point, taking on a color close to purple—upon hearing his answer. He sees his mother step up to his father’s side, stroking the back of his shoulder in a final attempt to pacify his temper. But her eyes are looking straight at Daniel, with a cold and unforgiving glint.

Daniel remains expressionless. He puts on his hood and walks up to join the semi-circle already forming around the ritual table, where Grace’s bruised and unconscious body will be brought and laid out in a minute. As he approaches, Charity shuffles aside to make room for him next to her. Neither of them speaks to or looks at each other; the hoods of the robes make it all the easier, for which Daniel is thankful.




“Mrs. Le Domas—I’ve been expecting you. So sorry for your loss.”

Grace recoils. “Please, call me Grace.” It’s been too long since anyone called her a Le Domas, or a missus. She doubts she will ever stop having a kneejerk reaction of repulse to either.

The lawyer, upon careful observation of her expression, follows up quickly. “Of course, Grace. You must be wondering why you have been receiving so many letters from us. We have invited you here today because you are the sole beneficiary of Mr. Daniel Le Domas’s last will and testament, and as such…”

Grace frowns. “Wait—say that again?”

The lawyer opens the file in front of her, some distance removed from Grace on the other side of the table. She peels it back carefully to reveal a clear pocket folder—and in it, a document written in ink, blotted by spots of red that Grace immediately knows to be blood.

“He wrote this, as an update to his existing will at the time,” the lawyer explains, her voice gone quieter. “On your wedding night. We don’t know how it survived the fire. But this—and his watch—” she reached into another pocket, and Grace feels her racing heartbeat grind to a halt at the sight of it, the bronze square face and the black leather strap.

She recognizes it instantly. She remembers putting her own wounded hand upon his left hand, his wedding band and the watch, soaking wet with the blood that poured out of the wound on his neck, trying to apply pressure in futility. His last word to her, the simplest command, how he turned on his side and said it without looking at her.

“I—” Grace opens her mouth, but the words don’t come out.




Getting Grace off that table and out of that room—that’s already further than Daniel had thought he could get. They are moving fast but, under the hallway lights, he can see Grace’s wounds that much clearer. The bloodstain that soaked through the left breast of the lace bodice—Daniel can’t help wincing when he first gets a good look at it, and it makes him want to reach into his back pocket to check that the only copy of his will is still there.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get Alex out, too,” holding Grace’s elbow in his hand to guide her along, Daniel can feel her shivering. He tries to say the most comforting thing he can think of, in his best attempt to hold his voice steady.

It doesn’t matter how this night ends; he’s not going to be the hero. He’s been in this story for too long to believe there remains any room for one to succeed. And then Charity’s gun goes off.




Grace walks back to her car. She puts the clear bag with that piece of paper and that watch on the passenger seat. She feels like retching, her chest heaves and her shoulders tremble, same as that night when she first realized she was being hunted.

Grace keeps driving. Under the dark clouds, frigid grey skyscrapers give way to frigid green trees. Out on the open road again, she presses her foot down on the gas pedal and floors it. She doesn’t realize there are tears flowing down her cheeks until they drop onto the steering wheel.




“Magnificent effort, Mr. Le Domas.”

Daniel turns around. He’s never heard Le Bail’s voice before, but it is unmistakably his. The devil himself is dressed immaculately in a three-piece pinstripe suit, smiling affably as he walks up to Daniel to stand next to him.

They are standing atop the rolling hills some twenty miles to the west of the Le Domas estate, looking down at its ruins in the making. The fires are growing uncontrollable, the rolling black smoke thick enough to obscure the still-feeble sunlight of dawn. Someone did, finally, burn it all down.

“I’ll grant you this wish,” Le Bail produces from his breast pocket his handwritten will. Only then is Daniel reminded to reach into his own back pocket—and, of course, it’s not there anymore. Pickpocketed by the devil, after all that happened—he can hardly feign surprise. “That’s how humans do it, right? ‘A will speaks from death.’”

“And I’m dead already, so,” Daniel shrugs. As far as being forever stuck in the outfit you wore at the time of death, he can do a lot worse than the tuxedo he wore to the wedding. He looks down at his right hand, the tiny splatter of ink on his sleeve that has followed him from the action to the aftermath. “It’s ‘speak now or forever hold my peace’, isn’t it?”

Le Bail smiles. “And would you like to haunt her?”

“That’s not part of the will.”

“I’ll throw it in as a freebie if you’d like to give it a try.”

Daniel turns to look at him. He wants to laugh at the perfect irony of it all, being tempted to make another deal with the devil, not even an hour since his family perished because of it. “Why?” He asks. He already knows the answer he will give Le Bail. Whatever the devil offers, a Le Domas never says no.

Le Bail only seems pleased that he asked. “Because, by surprising yourself, you've managed to surprise me.”




It’s just past midnight when Grace gets home. The first thing she does is putting the clear bag on her nightstand. And then she gets a glass of tap water, washes down the last bit of Ambien she can find, strips out of her clothes and climbs into bed. Grace screws her eyes shut as tightly as possible, so she doesn’t have to even _think_ about the things, Daniel’s things, being in her room, being right next to her.

This time, even sleep doesn’t deliver the blissful ignorance she so desperately wishes for.

“Thanks for crashing again into my tranquility.”

Grace doesn’t remember how she comes to it, only that Daniel’s voice registers first, and she turns around so quickly she almost feels dizzy on her heels.

There they are in the music room, again, just the two of them now. The roaring fire in the fireplace, the bright overhead lights, the plush armchairs of red velvet. The air is too warm and thick with that false sense of comfort and security, still.

She looks down at herself, puts her hand behind her neck—back in that pristine white wedding dress, not a hair out of place.

“This is a dream,” she announces to herself, but she’s looking straight at Daniel, nursing that tumbler of whiskey with his necktie undone, a loose noose around his neck. He’s not in the armchair like before; he’s standing by the piano instead, leaning back on it, his elbow resting on the shimmering black lacquer top of the piano. Grace sees that his sleeve is pulled just enough to show his watch.

“Hi Grace,” he nods at her with a small smile. Without that constant sheen of sweat, he almost looks well. “You have questions, I can only assume.”

She swallows, balls her hands into fists. “I feel like it’s _my_ tranquility being crashed into right now.” _Crash_ is a mild word for it. Crushed into dust? Blown to smithereens? Grace can think of a million more if it doesn’t already take all of her mental energy to stop her hands from shaking at her sides.

“Did you read it?” He asks before emptying the whiskey into his mouth. He looks better than Grace has ever seen him, on that day and before.

She shakes her head, “I know what it says. And it came with your watch.”

“Good,” Daniel straightens up, tugs at his shirt and smooths it down the front. He takes a small step towards Grace. “He did what he said he would do.”

There is no one else Daniel can be referring to. “Fucking Le Bail,” she spits out.

“No, it wasn’t his idea. I wrote the will and held onto it until—” he draws a finger across his throat, darts his tongue out for a second. “When he made the bodies disappear, he found it on me and held onto it. And then he said he’d grant me this.” Daniel takes a beat, “So, yeah. This is a dream, Grace. Or at least it’s not gonna be a nightmare, I hope.”

Grace walks towards him. She’s wearing the same pair of shoes that gnawed at her heels, which feels too familiar and yet entirely strange. The room is quiet enough to hear the sounds of her steps clicking against the floor.

“You know I don’t need the money.”

“No, you don’t. But you’re the person I trust to find a good use for it, after everything burns down.”

“Daniel,” Grace shakes her head. “I can’t even think about that right now.”

“Look, I wanted—" Daniel licks his lips, and they are standing close enough that Grace sees the glimmer in his eyes. “I was practically a dead man walking after I poisoned everyone, anyway. I was going to get you and Alex out, no matter what. And if I couldn’t leave alive—or if Alex couldn’t—I wanted to take care of you. Like family would.”

 _Family_. Hearing that word in Daniel's voice brings a lump into her throat. It is only then that Grace looks down at her hands and finds her fingers free of the wedding band. It’s the only thing absent.

“Alex didn’t choose me in the end,” the truth still hurts to admit out loud. “Becky asked me to bring him back into the fold, when we were sitting there, talking—” Grace looks to the long bench by the window. “But she was wrong. He never really left.”

“I…I figured that was what happened,” Daniel turns aside. “I’m sorry.”

“And where were you all this time? Why didn’t you—” Grace doesn’t know what the right words are. Would she have wanted him to, what, haunt her? What price did Le Bail make Daniel pay so that they can be here—together?

“Well, everyone else combusted and their souls went poof along with their bodies, but ironically enough, mine is still here. But I’m not free to just…go wherever I like. The stories about purgatory would be a lot more fun if that were true,” Daniel holds out his left hand, hikes up his sleeve to show it under the light. “It had to be something I carried with me for long enough in life, that I also had with me in death. So I asked Le Bail to take my watch.”

Without a word, Grace puts her hand on Daniel’s. Her fingertips brush lightly against the face. The hands are not moving, but the glass feels warm to her touch. She traces two fingers along the black leather strap, to where the buckle is fastened on Daniel’s wrist. Her fingers linger.

“You’re not going to find a pulse,” Daniel says, his voice quiet and resigned, like when he told her _this doesn’t end well for you_ in the billiards room. He was wrong, then; but there is no room for ambiguity here.

Grace lets her hand drop. She draws in a deep breath. “The watch won’t be gone when I wake up?”

“It’s yours. Along with my share of…however much all this adds up to be,” Daniel looks around the room, with that far-away look in his eyes that Grace remembers seeing every time he talks about his family at-large. She’s never had a chance to observe it closely; but she can see all his sadness, now. “Charity would have been livid if she ever found out what I wrote in that will. If you didn’t survive and I did, my family did—I would have gone back to the same lawyer the next day to change it all back,” Daniel lets out a deep sigh masked as a short laugh. “I ruined her, truly.”

“She made her own decisions,” says Grace, unblinking.

Daniel shakes his head. “On my wedding night—I’d hoped for hide-and-seek. I’d wanted her to draw that card so that I can volunteer to be the one on the ritual table, have her put a knife through my heart. I would have trusted her to do that for me. But we just ended up playing checkers, and it had to be drawn out for that many years.”

Grace’s chest tightens. In that moment of silence, their eyes meet. There is a hint of a glimmer in Daniel’s eyes, and the sight of it makes Grace’s nose sting. She tries to keep her voice steady and even, enunciating the words as much as she can.

“You are exactly who I thought you were, Daniel.”

And then she feels Daniel’s arm reaches around her side, his hand splayed on her back gently, like they are about to dance again. He leans forward above her shoulder, to put his lips beside her ear:

“I've never said this to anyone, about anything, but—it’s been an honor, Grace.”

—and then the lights go out.




Her dream ends first, but she doesn’t end with it.

When sunlight streams through her curtains, the whimper is not the first thing that registers with Grace. Before she even opens her eyes, she reaches blindly towards the nightstand, to feel for the shape of the watch. She finds it; the metal, glass and leather feel as solid as life itself.

Grace sits up on the bed and takes the watch out of the bag. It feels cold against her palm, dormant—and the feeling only makes her the dream more vivid. Even the smallest notch on the strap will probably leave the watch hanging loose on her wrist; she puts it on, anyway.

Hugging her knees close under the covers, she puts her lips against the watch face. She tastes the brininess of metal and leather, the smoothed corners of the square face.

Grace closes her eyes, to hold this moment still in her heart. Inhale, exhale—but then she hears something more than the beat of her heart. She opens her eyes.

The watch has begun ticking again.

**Author's Note:**

> It took a lot of alcohol and aimless pacing energy to get this idea (more or less) fleshed out. I played very fast and loose with the prompts, but I was indeed inspired to come up with the very basic premise of this fic after reading your letter and getting the general Grace/Daniel vibe you described. 
> 
> The title was a twist on "ink on the wedding dress", a colloquialism that refers to situations where a person tries to get their betrothed to sign a pre-nuptial agreement days before the wedding.
> 
> For anyone else who might care, I listened to ["Arcade Fire - Song on the Beach [10 Hour Loop]"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rjnP5EVpQc) while writing the last third of this fic.


End file.
